Milo Looks at New Police Plan

Milo officials are still looking for a new police chief. Their most recent chief resigned after being charged with assaulting his wife.The town is also without a police sergeant. Folks on the force have been stepping up, but Milo Town Manager Jeff Gahagan says they can only last so long. “We reach a point where burnout becomes an issue,” he says. Gahagan says they could just fill the position, or, they could look at other, potentially money-saving options.”The sheriff’s department approached us to offer their services while we’re in a bit of a state of flux here,” he says.A third solution — find a way to join forces with the neighboring town of Brownville.”It seemed timely that we talk about the police force because with the situation we’re in right now, we’ve been talking about everything from garbage removal to public works,” Gahagan says.The towns tried sharing a police chief before, several years ago.”We had a very informal agreement in we both hired the same police chief and shared coverage on times that we’re statistically less busy,” says Brownville Town Manager Sophia Wilson. “It was a project. It was an…experiment.”She says she’s open to options that save townspeople money, but only if they proceed with more caution than before.”When things got bumpy, there was nothing to fall back on,” she says.Both town managers stress no proposals have been drafted yet and everything will be decided by public vote.Gahagan says they hope to have a plan for a new chief in place in the next 30 to 60 days.”We just want to keep all of our options open,” he says. “We’ve got great neighbors in Brownville and they’re very easy to work with, so it seemed like a natural fit.”